The following interview with Umberto Eco—one of my absolute favourite writers—was published in The Guardian the other day (thanks Jens Rosbäck for the info). Umberto Eco in The Guardian
I have found that this crisis doesn’t worry me too much. The reason is probably that I have come to the conclusion that there will always be some crisis or another, it will have severe (or not so severe) consequences, but basically we will find a way of solving, maybe not the crisis but the effects of it. It’s like ecosystems; they are not destroyed, they change.
What does worry me however, is that I am not sure whether the politicians trying to solve it have analysed the situation from a historical perspective. If they do, they may realise that it is the second youngest democracies in Europe, which are cracking. This sends us an important message, i.e. that democracy means not only getting rid of a dictator or dictatorial rule, it means also a profound change in how politics is done, and a restructuring of private, local, regional and international economic relations. In other words, if we do not demand true democratisation of new (Eastern European) members of the Union, these will crack too in a few years time. Alas, a new maybe even worse crisis will emerge and be defined as a ‘surprise’.
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